Scarlet
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: It is neither normal nor healthy, but it has become all she knows.


**A/N: A fifty-sentence challenge around Ozai/Azula. I used a random word generator rather than a prearranged list. Inspired by/format seen in dancingkirby's "Dissociation," a lovely fic which everybody should definitely read. Anyway, enjoy! Which ones do you like best? Tell me!**

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><p>Divine<p>

People tell her that her skills must be a gift from the spirits for so many years while she's growing up that Azula starts to believe them; only years later, naked under her father's hands, does she realize that there is nothing sacred about her.

Curry

Noblemen are eager to bestow gifts and compliments on the princess while Ozai stands nearby, but one man dares to touch Azula, and the next week he suffers a mysterious _accident._

Champion

"You could defeat any bender your age with ease," Ozai says when Azula asks why she's not allowed to enter a firebending competition, "and tournaments are only playing at war anyway."

Necessary

"It would have died anyway," Azula says coldly after Zuko starts yelling at her for killing an injured rabbit-fox, and the words are an echo of their father.

Partial

It's the times when they're both clothed, sneaking away moments around corners or out under the sun, that seem most perverted to Azula, like a denial that what they're doing has anything to do with what couples do in dimly-lit bedrooms.

Sending

It is with reluctance that Ozai gives his daughter her mission to prune out the weeds of their family, for he doesn't like to imagine being parted from the lusty pleasures of her body for any period of time.

Wrist

Though she's become accustomed to their trysts, Azula resists the first time Ozai insists she kneel and open her mouth; he wordlessly grabs her hand and pulls it back until the bone cracks, and then there are no more complaints.

Preliminary

Azula has the faint recollection of her father bathing her when she was six or seven, his soapy hands sliding over her bare skin, only for Ursa to find out and reprimand Ozai (again) for spending time with only one of their children.

Need

His other concubines have been undoubtedly better than her at the act itself, but nothing is a better aphrodisiac for Ozai than his daughter's adolescent form underneath him.

Alert

She has trained herself to read her father's emotions and moods to unbelievable precision, but knowing her father is angry does nothing to make it hurt less when he invades her without preamble.

Prevention

One of her braver teachers manages to see the bruises on her neck and repeatedly asks Azula how she acquired them—even if she wanted tell the truth, it would condemn the woman to death.

Automatic

Her muscles memorize exactly how to move, her mouth makes the same sounds over and over again, and her eyes fix on the ceiling as she comforts herself with visions of a future where her skin isn't mottled green and purple with bruises.

Cutting

The insults and reprimands he deals her when she doesn't perform adequately are a thousand times more painful than the bloody lines she draws across her skin anyway.

Laziness

Zuko can babble about luck and innate talent all he wants, but he isn't the one who rises before the sun to practice bending, attends meetings at Ozai's side all through the day, and spends nights as their father's whore.

Attach

The nobles comment on the way that the young princess is always seen by her father's side, and the few that make lewd comments are unaware of how close they are to the truth.

Distortion

Though she's not one for wallowing, sometimes Azula can't help but wonder, on occasion, what she would be like if none of this had ever happened, if her father's lust found a different target.

Yearly

By rights, her birthday should be a joyous occasion, but the force with which Ozai has ravished her means that she goes to bed with her thighs bruised and her neck bleeding.

Sampling

It turns out that merely fucking her like an animal is only one of the many things Ozai desires to do with his youngest daughter.

Salvation

How ironic, Azula thinks (when she's lucid), that the only escape from her father's lust is a retreat into the confines of her own mind, where the specters of her imagination cause her arguably more torment anyway.

Circular

She wonders if the other Fire Lords have played with their daughters this way, but she's the only living girl of the bloodline and has nobody to ask.

Mutter

"Only_ prostitutes_ know that much about sex," one of Azula's classmates says under her breath, but when the princess's hands conjure fire, the girl begins to wish that she'd said it just a bit quieter.

Thick

The first time he enters her, she is certain that she is going to die, because nobody could endure something quite as painful and live.

Understanding

Ozai has no interest in her struggles, and there is no one else, so Azula talks to her reflection and gets only venom and criticism back.

Pill

The doctor said it might be infallible, but that doesn't stop Ozai from choking her while demanding to know whether she stopped taking her medicine.

Rumor

Nobody's careless enough to say it in front of them, but the fact that the nobles suspect something is clear from the way all conversation ceases whenever Azula enters a room, and the way she sees their eyes looking her up and down like a piece of meat.

Proportional

She doesn't resent her father for it, as he's still her teacher and the most important person in her life, and if he didn't care then she would be like Zuko, burned and banished.

Clog

One day when the emotions are particularly strong she pulls strand after strand of hair out of her scalp, but the drain ceases functioning when she tries to wash it away, so it sits there as a reminder of her weakness.

Phoenix

She will follow in her father's footsteps, a master firebender and a second child who succeeds the throne in place of the weaker older sibling, and sometimes she thinks of herself as_ part_ of her father, a second bird formed from the ashes of his rebirth.

Certainty

"Father loves me," the eight-year-old says smugly to her brother; "Father loves me," the ten-year-old whispers, as she washes out the scratches from where his nails dug in too hard; "Father loves me," the twelve-year-old murmurs, presenting herself as a worthy substitute for her mother's flesh and blood; "Father loves me," the fourteen-year-old screams at a mirror that reflects jagged bangs, trying to convince herself of a truth she's not sure of.

Empty

Ozai and Zuko have taken everything imaginable from her, so she sits in a cell and stares blankly at the wall, her mind forcing her to relive every last, miserable moment of her father's abuses until she realizes that she has literally nothing left to live for.

Steep

It escalates, and Ozai is clever, so in two years' time Azula has gone from resisting simple coitus to parading naked for him—a result that gives him twisted pride as he watches his little seductress.

Purpose

She will be Fire Lord, she reminds herself with every bruise and every burn, and the politics of that will surely be no harder than the physical and emotional torment she lives with day by day.

Instrumental

He needs her power and her mind and her body, surely he does…or at least Azula tells herself, over and over again, clinging to the idea that Ozai needs her exactly as much as she needs and depends on him.

Opus

The opera is supposedly a great masterpiece, but Ozai bores halfway through, so Azula spends the second half on her back in their private box, her hanfu spread open, trying not to make any noise and viciously aware that Mai and Ty Lee are sitting just a few rows in front of her.

Shaking

She can't stop her body from betraying her when the panic attacks arrive, so she simply holds tight to whatever surface is available and prays that nobody, especially not her father, will notice the tremble in her hands.

Ritual

It has become habit for her to undress and wait for her father in his bed, but tonight he breaks routine and invites her to the throne room instead, where the stone is so much colder and every thrust makes her body slam against the hard floor.

Growing

His fingers and hands wander over her developing body, massaging her small breasts, ghosting over the expanse of her buttocks, and settling in between her thighs, where he brings unwilling noises from her with quick, talented fingers—claiming every square inch of her skin as his own.

Subroutine

_Moan, buck, touch him_. Azula follows a strict script for their meetings, performing theatrically and feeling nothing, and she prays her father will play his part honestly, because it's when he deviates that it hurts.

Arguing

"You can't follow me around, watch me all the time, like spies," Azula snarls at Lo and Li, but then her father arrives to put a permanent end to any of her objections.

Weekend

The other students look forward to two days without lessons, but Azula sees the break only as more time under Ozai's lecherous thumb and less to spend with Mai and Ty Lee.

Rain

The sound of the storm outside keeps her company while she lies in a bed not her own, her sleeping father's arms trapping her in a cage she can't escape until morning.

Flavor

She grows as familiar with her father's body as he does with her own, and in their perverted trysts she's tasted his sweat and his saliva and his semen—all unpleasant and salty against her tongue as she chokes them down.

Failure

It's not her fault Zuko betrayed them and she's sorry she lied to him, she repeats over and over again, but her words do nothing to assuage Ozai's relentless assault on her fragile, breaking form in the aftermath of the attempted invasion.

Present

All of his gifts are heavy with double meaning, from the transparent silk robes to the decadent perfumes to the solid golden necklace that doubles as a collar when they're in the bedroom.

Curse

Everything that her father does to her, every inadequacy in her own body, she blames on her long-absent mother; Ursa is a scapegoat whom she despises already, and the projection is very simple.

Stress

Her father won't talk to her about his troubles, just grind them into her body, and Azula wishes she could help him beyond just serving as his sexual fulfillment.

Enthusiasm

When at last she gives in to the temptation and kisses Ty Lee, it is only half-hearted, because the omnipresent shadow of her father is watching and she fears the wrath of his jealousy.

Functioning

Pain does not slow her down, and Ozai does not hold back, because should her body give in under the weight of the physical burden she bears, the punishment would be far worse than fighting through temporary aches.

Desire

As she blossoms into womanhood and unfamiliar feelings course through her veins and pump between her legs, Azula goes to her father because he is the only one she has.

Deserving

They both sit in cells, distant cells, and Azula ignores the doctors in favor of ruminating on how bloody her hands are; there is little anyone can do when she starts skipping meals, and rumors that there will soon be a royal funeral abound.


End file.
